Peter Bay, Music Director and Principal Conductor

Peter Bay became Music Director and Conductor of the Austin Symphony Orchestra in 1998. He is also Music Director of the Hot Springs Music Festival in Arkansas, and Conductor of the Big Sky Festival Orchestra in Montana.

Peter is the primary conductor for the ASO’s performances with Ballet Austin. He made his Austin Lyric Opera debut in January 2002 with André Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire, conducted Verdi’s La Traviata in November 2002, Puccini’s Turandot in November 2003, and Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro in April 2005.

Other positions held by Mr. Bay have included Music Director of the Erie Philharmonic, Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, Breckenridge Music Festival (CO), Britt Festival Orchestra (OR), and four different conducting posts with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and the Richmond Symphony in Virginia. Bay and the Austin Symphony Orchestra have released a CD of Edward Burlingame Hill’s music on the Bridge label, and with the Richmond Symphony he recorded the US premiere performance of Britten’s The Sword in the Stone for Opus One Records. Voices, featuring the percussion ensemble NEXUS and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, is on the Nexus label.

A native of Washington, DC, Mr. Bay is a graduate of the University of Maryland and the Peabody Institute of Music. In 1994, he was one of two conductors selected to participate in the Leonard Bernstein American Conductors Program. He was also the first prize winner of the 1980 Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Young Conductors Competition and a prize winner of the 1987 Leopold Stokowski Competition sponsored by the American Symphony Orchestra in New York. In July 2012 he appeared in Solo Symphony, a choreographic work created for him by Allison Orr of Forklift Danceworks. He is the conductor of Hanan Townshend’s score to the motion picture The Vessel scheduled for release in 2015.

Assistant Conductor / Conducting Apprentice applicants:

Please submit a link to a YouTube video, or video hosted on a similar site, of a recent rehearsal (approximately 5 minutes) and performance (approximately 5 minutes) totaling no more than 10 minutes. Complete works are not necessary. Alternatively, applicants may submit via postal mail a high-quality North American-format DVD, CD-ROM or VHS tape labelled with name, contact information, and repertoire index.

Please also submit a complete resume and list of repertoire studied and list of repertoire performed.

The Assistant Conductor and Conducting Apprentice will be expected to provide his or her own scores to all orchestral and conducted chamber music at the Music Festival.